xercise of such a prerogative, expressed no wish "that it should ne resorted to." The matter apparently at least fell within his exclusive cognizance. He was to determine how far the peace of Europe was affected. Lord Aberdeen goes on and says: "In saying this, however, the house must not understand that I am the least prepared to censure the issue of that warrant. I am quite prepared, as well as every other member of the government, to share the full responsibility of that proceeding. I only wish the fact to be accurately stated Now, Sir, this is clearly the language of indirect repudiation. It is true that Lord Aberdeen became an accessary after the fact, but he did not take the initiative. We all know what sharing responsibility means. Each member of the cabinet takes his quota, and in the division the burden is supposed to be lightened. But wherefore did Lord Aberdeen state that it was not at his desire that this proceeding was adopted? What had the domestic minister—the minister of the interior, to do with the subject? I have a curiosity-the noble lord the chairman of the committee will probably call it prurient-in an eminent degree the "curiosa felicitas" is possessed by him; but I have a curiosity to know, why the Secretary for the Home department took on himself this very painful office? Is it that, although the temporal dominions of the pope are connected exclusively with Lord Aberdeen's department, an exceedingly interesting and agitated portion of the spiritual dominions of his Holiness is within the more immediate surveillance of the Home Secretary? But whatever was the cause regarding which the committee, who leave a good deal to the imagination, say nothing, it is certain that for three months Mazzini's letters were opened, and folded again, and resealed, and delivered to him just as if nothing at all had happened. My honourable friend the member for Finsbury brought the case before the House of Commons; at first he was received with all the authoritativeness of office he was surveyed by the Home Secretary with a lofty taciturnity. But the Prime Minister soon saw that public opinion ran with my honourable friend, and granted a committee. I pass over all that has been said about the constitution of the committee; there was not a lawyer amongst them, although they were charged to inquire into the state of the law. They were not a jury of inquisitors. No, not one of them was fit to act as a commissioner on the income tax; but it must be acknowledged that they are men of great intelligence, and of the highest worth and honour. I cannot, however, conceive how they have involved Mazzini's case in so much mystery. They tell us that they cannot tell us all. Why not? We are informed that a communica tion came from a "high quarter." Was it from Mr. Petre, at Rome. We are told that a communication was made to a foreign power. Wha foreign power? The committee state, that the information deduced from the letters-strange expression! -deduced from the letters, was communicated to a foreign power, but did not implicate any person within the reach of that foreign power. But it might have implicated some person within the reach of another foreign power to whom the information might be given at second hand. The conspirators at Bologna were not within the reach of Austria, but they were within the reach of Rome

But suppose that I abandon that suggestion, give me leave to ask how could the committee know that the information would not indirectly tend to criminate individuals? Some details must have been given; no name, but a place, a time, will suggest a name. Give a hint to a Bowstreet officer, put him on the scent, and how much will be traced out by him! But what are the ablest attachés of the Home Office-what are the most skilful among the retinue of the right honourable gentleman, to the Bologna police Put an Italian bloodhound on the track; let him but smucil the vestage of a Liberal, and with a sanguinary instinct he will scent his victim to the death. But, whatever be the opinion of the committee, there are two facts beyond doubt; first, that the Italian newspapers boasted that Mazzini was under the peculiar surveillance of the English police; and, secondly, that six weeks after the letters were opened six men were put to death for political offences at Bologna. Of the blood shed in Calabria you are wholly innocent, and I trust that with the blood shed at Bologna the hands of no British ministe are aspersed Sir, this proceeding is without a precedent. The first minister of the crown stated that the government had only done what their predecessors had done. Which of your predecessors communicated to a foreign government the information deduced from letters? My noble friend never did so. He did, indeed, interfere in affairs of Portugal and of Spain, but never by these means. He never got information from a Miguelite or a Carlist letter, and transmitted it to Lisbon or Madrid. He sent Sir De Lacy Evans to St. Sebastian, who arrested the career of Carlist victory. He did interfere, but it was against despotism that he interposed. He interfered at Rome, but it was not with a view to the maintenance of the Conservative institutions which you have taken under your protection. Yours is the praise (thɩ merit of originality is all your own) of having been the first to streten the statute of Anne, founded on a statute passed during the commou. wealth, into an instrumentality of this kind. You might have found in the history of the commonwealth something with regard to Italy more deserving of your imitation. At the hazard of exposing the peace of Europe, your republican forefathers made Sardinia quail, and rescued a portion of her subjects from the persecution of which they were the victims; and if all England was animated by the sentiment to which the greatest writer in your language has given an immortal expression -if 200 years ago your republican predecessors were fired by the fearless passion for religious freedom, is it fitting that their descendants should not only be insensible to the cause of civil liberty, but that they should become the auxiliaries of despotism, that they should lend au aid so sinister to crush the men who have aspired to be as you are. and that, by an instrumentality so deplorable, they should do their utmost to aid in the oppression of a country in whose freedom those who are in the enjoyment of true liberty can never be unconcerned Where is the man who has ever looked on Italy-that beautiful Italy to whose peculiar loveliness her calamities have been so justly ascribed, in that famous sonnet of which your own Byron has composed so nobiɛ a translation: where is the man who has any acquaintance with the

history of that celebrated people, and more especially with the annals o those glorious republics, by which the models of your own municipal institutions were supplied; where is the man who knows how much Italy has accomplished for the perfection of every art, and the advancemen of every science-how much has been achieved by Italy, not only i the embellishment of the human mind, but in its expansion and elevation; where is he whom Galileo has ever helped to look farther into heaven; or, who has been appalled, or thrilled, or enchanted, by those masterpieces in literature, writ in the most melodious language in the world, by which the wonders of antiquity have been emulated, if, indeed, in some instances they have not been surpassed, or, to speak of objects more immediately within the cognizance of us all-where, I will venture to ask, is the man who has ever traversed the repository of art, in the centre of your own metropolis, and beheld its walls glowing with the attestations to the supremacy of Italian genius,—who has not mourned over the fall of unfortunate Italy, and for her restoration to liberty and to glory, and for her resumption of the place which she ought to occupy amongst the nations of the earth, has not offered up a prayer? You think, perhaps, that I have in a moment of excitement into which I have permitted myself to be betrayed, forgotten the facts of my case. I have not. I go back to the post-office and to the home department, and I ask what is the palliation for this procceding? I will give it from the answer given by the prime minister to a questiou put by the member for Pontefract. Your extenuation is this-not that the inhabitants of Romagna have not monstrous grievances to complain of-no such thing; but this-if there be an outbreak in Romagna, the Austrian army will march into the Papal States-if the Austrian army marched into the Papal States, the French will send troops to Ancona-if the French send troops to Ancona there may be a collision-if there be a collision there may be a war between Austria and France-if there be a war between Austria and France there may be a general continental war-if there be a continental war England may be involved in it, and therefore, but not at the desire of Lord Aberdeen, you opened Mazzini's letters, and acted on the most approved principles of continental espionage. The word is strong--is it inappropriate? If you had employed a spy in the house of Mazzini, and had every word uttered in his convivial hours, at his table, or even at his bed-side, reported to you,that would be espionage. Between that case of hypothetical debasement and what has actually befallen, the best casuist in an Italian university could never distinguish. Are we, in order to avoid the hazards of war to do that which is in the last degree discreditable? You would not, in order to avoid the certainty of war, submit to dishonour. When an Englishman was wronged in a remote island in the Pacific, you announced that the insult should be repaired, or else; and if you were prepared in that instance to incur the certainty of war, and to rush into an encounter, the shock of which would have shaken the word, should you, to avoid the hazards of war, founded on a series of suppositions, perpetrate an act of self degradation ?There are incidents to this case which afford a warrant for that strong

expression. If you had sent for Mazzınt, if you had told him that you knew what he was about-if you had informed him that you were read ng his letters-the offence would not have been so grievous; but his letters were closed again—with an ignominious dexterity they were refolded, and they were resealed, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the honour of this country was tarnished by every drop of that molten wax with which an untruth was impressed upon them. Is there any clause in the statutes of Anne, and of William, and of Victoria by which this fraud is warranted? There have been questions raised as to whether a separate warrant is requisite for every separate letter But there is no proviso in the act legaiug this sleight of hand, this worse than thimble-rig proceeding. I have not entered, and I will not enter, into any legal disquisitions; it is to the policy, the dignity, the truthfulness of this transaction that my resolution is directed. It will no doubt he said that the committee-men of great worth and high integrity, and singular discrimination-have reported in favour of the government. I admit their worth, their integrity, and their discrimi nation, but I deny that they have reported in your favour. They avoid, cautiously avoid, finding a justification, giving an approval of your conduct. They say that they see no reason to doubt the goodness of your motives. Your motives! There is an aphorism touching good inten tions to which it were a deviation from good breeding too distinctly te refer; but it is not for your good intentions that you were made a minister by the Queen, or that you are retained as a minister by the House of Commons. The question is not whether your intentions ars good or bad, but whether you have acted as became the great position of an English minister, named by an English sovereign, and adminis tering a great trust for the high-minded English people. I think that you have not; and it is because I think so, that I propose a resolution in which I have set down facts beyond doubt and beyond dispute, and with facts beyond doubt and dispute I have associated an expression of sorrow in which I trust this house will participate.

COLLEGE OF MAYNOOTH.

SPEECH MADE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, APRIL 4, 1845, ON SIR ROBERT PEEL'S MOTION FOR LIBERTY TO BRING IN A BILL TO AMEND THE ACTS RELATING TO THE COLLEGE OF MAYNOOTH.

I RISE to move the adjournment [loud cries of “ go on,” no, no”]. The hour is so late that I shall hardly be able to proceed [go on, go on]. I must, I see, obey the injunctions of the house, and therefore I shall go on as well as I am able. It were unjust on the part of any Irish Catholic to withhold a tribute of unqualified panegyric from the great measure proposed by the right honourable gentleman, and from the spirit in which it is propounded. He can have no motive but the honourable one of doing service to both countries; and he will, I trust, secure the gratitude of the one, and, notwithstanding a temporary clamour, his objects will, ere long, be justly estimated by the other. The grant to Maynooth is large. The substitution of a permanent legislative endowment for an annual parliamentary donation, is attended with two advantages; first, the periodical recurrence of a discussion in which religious antipathies find a vent will be avoided. Gentlemen with strong theological addictions, must henceforth seek relief in a celebrated spot of pious gathering in the Strand, and must avail themselves of that exceedingly commodious, and far more appropriate medium of evacuation. In this regard, the proposition of the right honourable gentleman is most commendable; but it is still more important that fixity of tenure should be given by an act of parliament to a great Catholic establishment. Maynooth is converted into an institution, and is placed on the same footing, as the rest of your national incorporations. You are taking a step in a right direction. You are advancing in a career of which you have left the starting-post far behind, and of which the goal, perhaps, is not far distant. You must not take the Catholic clergy into your pay, but you can take the Catholic Church under your care. You can build houses of worship, and grant glebe houses, upon a secure and irrevocable title. The perfect independence of the Catholic clorgy is indispensable. A stipend at pleasure, and which the crown could call back, would be odious. An honourable relation—a relation honourable to both-may be established between the Catholic Church and the state, but you must never think of exacting from that church an ignominious complaisance. I am well aware that there exists in this country great objections to Maynooth, but those objections are in a great part connected with defects, of which the correction is not difficult: those defects, indeed, arise in a great degree from the niggard spirit in which you have doled out a wretched pittance to Maynooth, utterly incommensurate with its I am not astonished that a Scotch volunteer should entertain antipathy to Maynooth; but it is matter to me of some surprise that it should be an object of antipathy to an English Conservative in the true sense of a phrase often misapplied. Maynooth was founded

wants.